Sword's Edge

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Song of the Week: Pop Muzik

I’ve been kind of all over the place with the first couple of posts in this thread, and I’m going to try to be a bit more organized. My plan is to start following a more chronological format—not necessarily when the song came out but when I became aware and enamoured of it.

Let’s start with the first single I ever bought. I honestly can’t remember if it was “Pop Muzik” by M or “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Based on the dates of release, I’m going to say it was “Pop Muzik.”

I was a kid in elementary school and I listened to top 40 radio. There was an AM radio station in Hamilton or Kitchener—I can’t remember but local, just not in Brantford—and I used to listen to the countdowns. Looking back, a lot of the songs I gravitated to were the post-punk songs—Blondie, the Cars, Nick Lowe.

“Pop Muzik” was obviously heavily infused with disco, but it had the elements of post-punk that Alan Cross mentions in his Ongoing History of New Music—it has a DIY-edge and a messiness that just wasn’t super common before the breakout of punk. It was the same kind of fun groove that I later really appreciated in songs like the Farm’s “Groovy Train.”

Not all of the singles and albums I bought were what would come to be known as alternative—one of the first albums I bought was Queen’s Greatest Hits—but it sure did dominate my musical tastes even back in those days.

As for the Buggles, Trevor Horn had a lot to do with a band that dominated for a period early in my high school career: Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

But that’s a different story . . .